They played Introducing the Band, Flashboy, Trash, Animal Nitrate, Heroine, No Tomorrow, What I'm Trying to Tell You, Float Away, The Big Time (acoustic), The Drowners, To The Birds, New Generation, I Can't Give Her What She Wants, So Young, Metal Mickey, Beautiful OnesEncore: Like Kids

15 February 2016 BBC 6 Music Festival, Bristol, review: 'could become one of Britain's greatest' Tim Martin “The landscape of British music would be very different without 6 Music,” proclaimed Suede’s Brett Anderson shortly before launching into another sweat-soaked, mic-swinging musical meltdown that would have exhausted a man half his age – and, in the third year of this festival programmed by the BBC’s alternative music station, it was hard not to agree with him. Spread across four venues in Bristol and broadcast live on digital radio, this was an enthralling mixture of the big, the up-and-coming, the retro and the entirely leftfield. A slightly tired-sounding Primal Scream headlined Friday night, relying heavily on old hits from their classic albums Screamadelica and XTRMNTR and flubbing their new single, the sub-New Order Where the Light Gets In: they got through it second time around, to a rather glum reception, but rescued the vibe with a sizzling rendition of Swastika Eyes. The real action, however, was on the sidelines, with a blistering set from the all-female Anglo-French rock group Savages and a neon-soaked love jam from the Californian dance-punk outfit !!!. On Saturday, trip-hop pioneer Tricky received the ecstatic welcome due a homegrown Bristol boy, but the music, from his Skilled Mechanics record, was a weird performance even for this famously weird performer: writhing and muttering to Nineties-era crunchy guitar and drums, he sometimes resembled the least likely Rage Against the Machine tribute band on the planet. Over at the city’s Colston Hall, a place usually consecrated to more sober entertainment, crowds thronged staircases and balconies in an ecstatic drum-and-bass trance for an ear-melting set by DJs Roni Size and Krust, all thought of queuing for the evening’s headliners Underworld lost. And the gender-fluid US twentysomething Ezra Furman, in blue sports jacket and minidress, delivered perhaps the festival’s most arresting live performance, a crackling modern update of glam rock on which the shade of Bowie might have smiled. “I’m going out of my mind,” Furman yowled. “Who’s coming with me?” Sunday began with more reflective pleasures, opening with a yearning solo set from Elbow frontman and 6 Music host Guy Garvey. While audiences at Colston Hall swayed to the witty lyrics and chest-bursting bass synths of John Grant (“You said I should learn to love myself … Well, make up your mind, Dr Frankenstein”) and a serious-minded set from Laura Marling, whose accent zoomed erratically between Southern England and Southern California, crowds across town were transfixed by the euphoric dance-rock of Manchester’s Everything Everything and the transcendent wash of brass from New Mexico-based Beirut. Extraordinary fringe appearances from performers with more niche followings (the hip-hop poet Saul Williams; Julian Cope, with day-glo Mellotron in tow) underlined the only problem with this festival: tickets were restricted by venue, queues formed early and rooms filled fast, so it was impossible, for a variety of reasons, to see everything. With more availability, or room to spread, in future years this delightfully broad-minded event may end up one of Britain’s greatest.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/what-t ... -britains/